Venus

Science
Science brain teasers require understanding of the physical or biological world and the laws that govern it.

You awake inside a small transparent capsule sitting on the surface of Venus. From a small speaker you hear a voice that says, "We will leave you here either for a day or a year. If you choose to stay a day, we will give you $1 million. If you choose to stay a year, we will give you $2 million. Either way, you will have sufficient food and water. We will make sure the temperature is a constant 70 degrees Fahrenheit. We will also supply cable TV."

What is your choice? (Don't let money decide your answer).

Answer

Choose to stay one year and win $2 million. Venus takes 243 Earth days to rotate on its axis, but it takes 225 Earth days to go around the sun. On Venus a day is longer than a year.

I'm sorry but the correct answer is a day. If you are in a transparent capsule that means you will be affected by the elements. You are so much closer to the sun that at 70 degrees F with the direct rays from the sun you will fry in less time.
especially since the capsule could act like a greemhouse using the moisture from your body. No thanks. I'll stay a day and take the money thank you.

but cajan...they explained before that a day on venus is longer than a year...so if you stayed for a day you would be "frying" longer. BTW...very good riddle. I didn't know that. I guessed at what to do.

hey wow, that one was good. I had no idea, I just said stay a year because you can't really be on venus cuz there's no medium for the sound to travel through. But then again, if you're on a planet, the atmosphere might provide one.....I don't know, its 100 pm and I'm going to sleep now. Goodbye

I'm sorry to take the wind out of everybody's sails. You would suffocate in that "small transparent capsule", as soon as all of the available oxygen is converted to carbon dioxide. However, I did enjoy the riddle.

venus' axis is not tangential to the sun, therefore it is possible to be in complete darkness infinitely (or complete light), depending on where your capsule was placed. not many people could survive utter darkness for 250+ earth days, due to altered vitamin D metabolism and therefore malnutrition.

ok i have one question....how the hell did i end up in Venus?? I wanna go home
Ok now that i have my sanity back, very good teaser and whats with everyone saying , 'but something would happen, blah blah blah' its only a teaser! It doesnt have to be scientifically exact!!!! ( did i spell that right?:S)

Wel den I gess d@ a lot a peepl don't have brains, cuz lot's a peepl didn figure it out. And, that is abusing the english language. I don't think there is a person left in the world who can write oyut "that" ot "you". So, go and sit in a whole.

einat16 , I agree 100%!! I thought the riddle was great! Why can't you all just read the riddle, decide whether you like ot or not then comment on if if you want? Why do you have to be so picky about it!!

Dear "thick_lil_girl" i think you will know me as we are best friends unless you have fallen out with me for some bizzare reason! now ppls want to complain about it because they have no brains and want to become a new person on the web and would like to have brains so they try to show off how "smart" they are but sowwie ppls it aint workin not 4 me and not 4 me "thick" friend!!!

Hey, odcsurferchick, I'm with you all the way! I'm surprised he's not here to yell at this person for plagerism, or correct him that Venus would kill you from the fumes or whatever........
Surely you can't mean me missie, I am a reformed character.

The money part was completely unecessary, though. Since you know that you will be in comfort, and you know that a Venus year must be shorter than an Earth year, who wouldn't accept 2 million dollars for less than a year's work, even ignoring whether or not it is longer than a Vesuvian day.
A better way of phraseing the puzzle might have been "You really want to get home! How long should you stay?" Although, then most people would guess that a Vesuvian year is longer than a vesuvian day, simply because it is the less obvious answer.

Gee I must be odd or something. I thought it was a great puzzle. Not for one moment did I think that I might bust my kidneys by not going to the toilet for a year or any weird stuff like that. I guessed that it had something to do with Venus's orbit so I looked it up in a book. Now I know that a day on Venus is longer than a year! Cool!

I agree with thik_lil_girl that sometimes people here are too picky, but in this case it's justified. The answer could have been one day because you'd need to use the bathroom, or you'd run out of air, or the capsule would begin to melt. Sometimes it pays to be picky. But you could figure out that all these factors are accounted for and then this makes a great teaser. Personally, I don't have cable t.v., so I'd stay for 2 years anyway.

Good point! 225 vs 243 days is pretty comparable, but 365 vs 1 is pretty significant. It appears you have to guess what type of year the voice on the speaker is referring to. Since they've been considerate enough to consider how many degrees Fahrenheit you'd be comfortable at, you can figure the voice could also be using Earth years. So...the gamble then becomes, what kind of year is the voice talking about?

I thought this was a good teaser. I didn't KNOW for sure the answer, but I deduced it by figuring it out that as the planets get farther away from the sun, the year gets longer and the day gets shorter, the weather gets cooler and so on. There were a few "flaws" that other people have mentioned, and I have one minor one to include: I get fed, but in a year, I would grow too big for the box and die of heart failure. Come on people, this is a teaser, it was fun, it was educational, and I will use it on my children for those reasons.

Um... sorry, but even before I read all these comments, all I could think was that I'd either suffocate from lack of oxygen, or drown in an ever rising puddle of my own excrement. Either way, I'd have to say "No, thank you! Now get me back to Earth!"

Ok, this is very good teaser, but there is a fundamental problem with it. 243 days is not the "lenth of day" on Venus. 243 Earth days is its "sidereal rotation period" or the duration for one planetary revolution on its axis in ralation to the stars. A planets "lenth of day" is the duration from sunrise to sunrise (its rotation relative to the sun). For Venus that is only 116.75 days which is less than its orbital period or year of 224.7 days. If you were living on Venus, 116.75 Earth days is what you would observe as the duration of a true "day". The time it takes for the sun to arrive at the same point in the sky as the day before.

For further explanation read on:
Sorry if it gets too technical.

There is nothing wrong with using the "sidereal rotation period" of planets to compare rotational speed with one another. In fact, this the preferred way because it ignores the planets motion around the sun. However, it is not the way one would measure a day if you were actually on the surface of that planet. Take Earth for example, Earth's "sidereal rotational period" is 23 hours 56 minutes. Why is it not exactly 24 hours? Because during that time the Earth has also been revolving around the sun and it now in a different position relative to the sun. So the Earth has to continue to rotate for another 4 minutes until the sun appears at the same point in the sky as it did the day before. We on Earth know our "day" to be exactly 24 hours, because that IS the "lenth of day" on our planet.

Now, on Venus this difference is much more exagerated and its "lenth of day" is LESS than its "sidereal rotation period". This is due to the fact that Venus rotates in "retrograde" (it spins on its axis the opposite direction than that of Earth and most other planets). So as Venus revolves around the sun this motion actually helps to shorten its true "day" rather than lenthen it as it does on Earth. Also Venus's revolves around the sun much more quickly than Earth does. Again, combined with its retrograde spin, this tends to further shorten its "lenth of day" compared to its "sidereal day".

This teaser actually works for the planet Mercury, however. Mercury's "lenth of day" is 175.94 days and its year is only 87.97 days long. So it's day truely is twice as long as its year as observed from the surface. Also Mercury's orbital speed overtakes its rotation speed at some point in its orbit which to an observer on the surface would cause the sun to slowly come to stop in the sky, go backwards for a while, halt, and then continue to tavel on its path across the sky. At certain places on Mercury this could also result it two sunrises and two sunsets in one day.

Ok, i read all the other posts and allot of you folks are finding little quirks in the logic, but nobody mentioned that:
by the time NASA could design and test a craft that could make it to Venus, withstand the heat factors, provide cable (or dish) TV, store water, store food, store oxygen, deal with the human waste factor, then make it back to earth...it would be many many years from now before NASA (at the rate that they develop new technology) could accomplish this.
Take into account the rate of economic inflation, 2 million bucks then would not as much as 2 hundred bucks now, therefore not worth the time to sit on Venus for a year and miss your family and friends.
But i liked the teaser. It was fun to read all the comments.

(user deleted)
May 04, 2005

bbbz - check your math.... You state that the earth must rotate an EXTRA four minutes to complete one day, yet our day is 23 hours 56 minutes, instead of 24hours 4 minutes.

Judging by the number and content of the comments for this puzzler this one got a lot of people thinking. Of course the riddle mentioned nothing about the air supply which would run out in not renewed over the course of a Vesuvian year. Also we Earthlings are protected by radiation from the Sun by the Van Allen belt-I know Venus has a thick cloud layer but would radiation on the surface of Venus be a problem? Also cable TV has been shown to kill (brain cells).

neat trick. But nothing was mentioned about whether it would be an earth day and year or a Venus day and year. I would choose nether because my family and friends are more important than a couple of millions of dollars.

Ok, now if a day on Venus is longer than a year here on earth, and you chose to stay a day for the $1mill, then you would be there a little longer than an earth year, so they suggest you stay 2 yrs and get the $2mill. Are you kidding me. If one day is longer than a year then a year is longer than 365years.....you could never collect you money because you are dead!!!!!!!!!

I learned something again I probably once knew, learned more from the bbz short course .. either way I would probably loose the remote and go stark raving nuts .. no internet and no remote! .. I liked this one all in all .. looks like riddles come around about once an earth year .. I though days were getting longer?

im not sure if this is what bbbz was saying, but think about it: the time will not be different, you will just have to deal with a longer night and day.
just because one night-day rotation on venus is longer than a one day-night rotation on earth, it will take the same amount of time

Wait.... Does it raelly matter what a year is on Venus? Because wether your on venus, jupiter, or pluto a year is a year to us earthlings. So the earthlings will be picking us up on thier earth time for a year. Not venus's. (Hopefully)

I found myself wondering if they meant a year on Venus or an Earth year. If you were offered 2 million to stay the duration of one Earth year, then you'd have to stick around until one year had passed on Earth... hmmm... still wouldn't mind being paid 2 million for one year's salary!

You people are making things so complicated! Lol. Just read the teaser and let it go. It's not like any of this could actually happen, but it's just a scenario. *rolls eyes, laughing about people who look too much into things*

Very clever teaser!! I liked it! (didn't get it though) I think it's great when a teaser gets SO many people thinking!!

I know I've said this before, but I wish people would see that most of the comments that they object to, are simply the product of critical thinking (which is a good thing)! This site is MEANT to exercise your brain! I don't think most of these comments are trashing the teaser OR it's author! IMO, when a teaser provokes lively discussion, it is all the more fun!

i GUESSED IT! I didn't know the exact reason, but I just figured that the teaser wouldn't be phrased this way unless the answer was the opposite of what seemed reasonable.

I agree with chotliva above, unless someone is putting down someone or using offensive language, I don't mind people poiinting out this that and the other thing. I thought about all those things too, the air, the food and waste, etc. and maybe the author could add all that next time and make it even better. But, people should still thank the writer and respect the work that goes into it, while still politely offering some additional insight or fact. Like I do, LOL!

ALL YOU PSEUDO INTELLECTUALS SHOULD HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO THAN TO PICK APART THE TEASER. IT WAS "OBVIOUSLY" SUBMITTED TO TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE FACT THAT A VENUSIAN DAY WAS LONGER THAT A VENUSIAN DAY. ACCEPT IT FOR WHAT IT WAS INTENDED, A TEASER!

great teaser!
i actually got it right cuz there was this kid in my math class last year that told everyone little like trivia things everyday and this was one of the things i remembered
turns out you do learn something in math class every once in a while!

Great informative teaser. Am not sure how I will ever put this info to work, unlike the teachers in the group, but still enjoyed trying to solve this one. I also found reading the comments interesting, how the posts kind of c hanged in four years, and yet remained the same.

First of all, I thought this was a great teaser!
Next, it's a teaser, not a sci-fi novel! It's meant for fun, not to be picked to bits.
And anyway, it does make sense if you use your imagination. Nowhere in the teaser does it say the capsule is from NASA, or anywhere on Earth. It could be made by aliens with a higher intelligence than us! Maybe the aliens have a tranparent, heat/pressure-resistant material that blocks out radiation. And assuming they have a way to get food and water into the capsule, it's not too much of a stretch that they have a way to get excrement out. Even though the teaser doesn't say that you'll be provided with oxygen, it makes sense that you would be, and also that there'd be a way to get carbon dioxide out of the capsule. Oh, and if these aliens have a higher intelligence than we have, it probably wouldn't be too hard for them to pipe in cable tv. lol
Anyway, there's my spiel. I'll be quiet now.

It does say it's a Science teaser right up top and "You awake inside a small transparent capsule sitting on the surface of Venus." sort of implies the day/year will be Venusian -- Anyways just have fun with it and stop picking it to pieces yeesh.

Oh wow! This is really wierd that this was the daily teaser because I just learned the whole thing about Venus this week so I was able to get it in a snap! This was fun and if people don't like the teaser they shouldn't waste their time adding comments.

Fun teaser! I was going under the assumption that the capsule would keep out the carbon dioxide and compensate for the 90x pressure. My concern was a lack of bathroom facilities LOL. I cheated and looked up the day and year length of venus, so chose the year. Well done.

the tv and internet problems can be solved using satelete transmission similar to the way that SETA uses it to search for life in other parts of the universe. the heat problem can be solved with airt conditioning, food problem with refrigrigation and freezing of the food until needed, electricity problem by using solar panals, the water can be stored in bulk containers.

I also used to (before I read this teaser) feel that there weren't enough hours in our day, now I think that our 24-hour day is just fine and dandy. Who'd want a day that lasts hundreds of hours??? True, one could get lots of work done, but at times it would drag.

So many comments, so many, many comments.... if you've read them all and made it down to my comment in one sitting, you have way too much time on your hands, or (like me) are procrastinating doing something else you should be doing. Hah!

Good teaser, btw. I didn't bother looking up the details, but I knew the Venusian "day" was really long... I wasn't sure if it was longer or shorter than its year, or if it was the same (though I guess I probably would've remembered if it was tidally locked). Neat to know, for sure!

A science teaser should be correct and the day on Venus is 117 Earth days. That is from High Noon to High Noon. I'm not picking it apart, just saying, "it should be correct." Good for you bbbz, maybe your explanation was a bit wordy and folks got lost in it, but you are right.

I picked one day. Venus is a volcanic planet, even though the lava just oozes out slowly doesn't make it safe. People need fresh air. besides, who wants to live on a planet doing nothing except eat for two years?